Großvater (2013/14)

My family took great pride in being a family of intellectuals. My siblings and I grew up with the awareness that we belonged to a special clan. As a five-year-old, I worried that my career aspirations might not be befitting of our status. I asked my mother whether it was possible for a ‘Schieder’ to become a baker. The question caused general amusement.

The prominent head of the Schieder family was my grandfather, the historian Theodor Schieder. Everyone was particularly proud of him. Decorated with the Federal Cross of Merit and the Order Pour le Mérite, rector of the University of Cologne from 1962 to 1964, editor of the Historische Zeitschrift, responsible for the historical part of diplomatic training at the Foreign Office and much more, my grandfather was a shining example of what a Schieder could become. Following this example, my father and my two uncles also became university professors.

At school, too, some teachers regarded us as part of a special species. The grammar school that my brother and I attended in Cologne had already been attended by my father and my uncles. In class, we were asked quite openly whether we were related to the aforementioned Theodor Schieder. Being related to him was not usually an advantage. Many teachers assumed that with such a grandfather and family, we had to perform at the highest level. My grandfather gave the keynote speech at the 150th anniversary of this very school.

My grandfather did not have much to do with children. Not that he was not a loving grandfather; he could be very charming with us grandchildren. But he preferred his work and interacting with adults. When he died in 1984 – I was sixteen – I had never had anything like an intellectual discussion with him. 

 

His career before 1945 was never discussed in the family. Only my older uncle asked his father questions and was therefore considered the black sheep of the family. He never received any answers, on the grounds that he hadn't been there. My grandfather also let his students know that he had no intention of answering questions.

At the 150th Historikertag (Historians' Day), almost fourteen years after his death, a broad debate began about his role during the Nazi era. The debate made it into the culture sections of the major daily newspapers. This date also represented a paradigm shift for me. Whereas before I had occasionally been approached with almost reverential questions about Theodor Schieder, now it was often interest in his role in the Third Reich. I couldn't say much about it, and at that time I had other things on my mind than my grandfather' life.

But as you get older, you often ask yourself why you are the way you are and why your siblings, cousins, why we have all become the way we are – each different in our own way, but still shaped by this family and its history, by the expectations planted in us and the expectations we have of ourselves, by what is said and what is left unsaid.

And you wonder what kind of people they are who have shaped you, why they turned out the way they did. Would you have behaved differently in their place? Can you, should you even make a final judgement about them from this retrospective position?

 

My grandfather was an ardent nationalist in the 1920s and 1930s. That was not unusual at the time. The results of the Treaty of Versailles were generally perceived as a disgrace and an injustice. As a historian, he specialised in so-called Ostforschung (Eastern research). Similar to Polish Westforschung (Western research), this sought, among other things, to scientifically substantiate Germany's territorial claims in Central Eastern Europe.

Until the mid-1930s, he still considered himself a national conservative. In 1937, however, he joined the NSDAP, probably out of opportunism, as the membership ban on certain groups of people, such as his own, which had been in force since 1933, was relaxed and membership promised professional advantages.

Among his most inglorious activities during this period were his assistance in the looting of Polish archives, which, according to current knowledge, contributed to the identification of the Jewish population, and his collaboration on the so-called ‘Poland Memorandum,’ which, after the invasion of Poland, dealt with ideas about what to do with the conquered territories. In 1943, he was appointed full professor of history at the University of Königsberg.

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In 1944/45 my grandfather and his family fled to the Allgäu region. For two years, he searched in vain for a new position as a professor. Then, in 1947, after successful undergoing denazification, he was appointed to the Chair of Modern History in Cologne, where he lived until his death.